the harvest games (do you know what it's like to die slow?)
by Chrysa Lite
Summary: glimpses into the harvest moon universe, where its citizens live, love, and die with the shadow of the harvest games over them. /chapter four: lanna, fairytales, and happily ever after.
1. Sabrina

**trigger warnings for: umm, blood, murder, rape, death, killing, you know. all that fluffybunny hunger games stuff. also swearing. seriously guys, this is rated m for a reason. this is not disney stuff, this is death and dying and murder and blood and children being forced to murder and children going crazy because of the aforementioned murder. the hunger games universe is _shit._**

* * *

What the world saw:

Sabrina Collier. Pale, pretty, _weak. _The pampered only child of a mining magnate who broke down on TV and roared and wept and said he would pay anyone anything to Volunteer in his daughter's place.

Some laughed in his face. "Maybe now you'll finally know what it's like to lose someone you love to the Harvest," they jeered. "Who's the pathetic brat now, huh? Your daughter's going to die on live television and everyone'll see. Colliers die just as easy as everyone else!"

Some considered. Looked at their siblings' shrinking frames, the bones of their wrists, the worn-through clothing. Thought that maybe their life was small exchange for Regis Collier's wealth. Even just a tiny percentage of the man's gold would be enough to sustain a family for a year. Was it worth it? Volunteering for someone who had been Harvested?

Some, mostly the younger ones, the ones who hadn't yet learned to think _Thank Goddess it wasn't me, it wasn't me_ looked at Sabrina Collier and hurt inside, because Sabrina Collier was a kind girl. She went out of her way to give food to kids at school who needed it, or left it in lockers when the kids were too proud. Mysterious wools made their way to the families who were dying of cold. Money was tucked into the books of those whose fathers were drowning in debt. They looked at Sabrina Collier, and hurt, because they had learned to love the pretty, pale, weak girl.

What the world saw:

Sabrina Collier got a two, and cried during her interview.

"I only ever wanted to be _happy,_" she sobbed. "To laugh my whole life."

When she got into the arena, she had no idea how to survive. Only got fish by sheer luck, and stayed close to water because she was smart. She had an ally. Just one. A little twelve-year-old named May.

May screamed beautifully for Sabrina when the Career boy from Four caught her and raped her. Sabrina was hiding in the bushes, weeping, and not daring to move to save her. She would just have been killed anyway.

When she died, the whole world could see Sabrina scream.

What the world did not see:

Sabrina was the only daughter of a _mining _magnate. She'd grown up with rock cracking under steel, dynamite blowing up passages.

When the pickaxe disappeared from the Careers' camp, they didn't think much of it – they hardly noticed it, drowning in swords and maces and daggers as they were.

They thought of it much more, when a pretty, pale, weak girl sneaked into their camp and started hacking at them with a pickaxe.

She took especial care with the boy who violated May. Made him suffer. Hacked off his bits, first, then his limbs. Finally, his head.

She was laughing as the blood spurted from his arteries.

When the hovercraft came to crown her the Victor, she was still laughing.


	2. Vaughn

The Capitol loves Vaughn, of course. Silver-haired, gorgeous, amethyst eyes and that dark, brooding manner. Men and women alike are drawn to that aura, women wanting him to _open up _to him and men wanting either to dominate or be dominated.

Vaughn wasn't a career trib. Just a boy plucked from goddess-knows-where, scrawny and starving, but with that silver hair and gorgeous eyes and the ability to make the whole world _swoon._

Black-and-Silver Prince, they call him. He's in high demand among the rich and famous in Panem. He graces their beds, silver and lithe and gloriously naked, and when he's slithered out of your bed he'll have taken all your secrets and you'd've been happy to give them to him.

(In the games that killed his best friend in the world, there hadn't been anything to eat. Denny and Vaughn were allies, but they were starving. One day Denny'd gone out to the river, tried to fish, tried to hold on to some semblance of what he was. A fisherman, a provider. He'd died there. The piranha-muttations had destroyed him.

Blind with terror and fury, Vaughn had clubbed the fish and ran. Just ran. And when he came across the first crop of wild carrots, he had fallen upon them and eaten them, sobbing as the blood of his best friend smeared on the orange.

Vaughn Vaults despises carrots. Ever since that moment, when he ate the wild carrots with the blood of his best friend on his hands, he has hated them. They will always taste like blood and the arena to him.

President Snow knows this, and makes certain to broadcast to the world that Vaughn Vaults, Capitol darling, loves carrots.

Everyone always has a stock of carrots on-hand, just in case Vaughn Vaults ever comes by.)


	3. Chelsea

Chelsea was a Career tribute.

Born and bred Victor, she was, from a long line of Victors. Had learned to fight with sickles, with axes, hammers, plows, swords. Hand-to-hand, too. When she stood onstage with the light gleaming off of her coppery hair, everyone in the Capitol knew – she was deadly. Deadly and gorgeous.

She goes into the arena with the sponsors already fawning over her, showering her with silver parachutes, the other tributes already terrified of her, and she takes her Cornucopia sickle and reaps them all.

There's no contest. Even the Career tribs fall to her and her sickle, and she is pulled out of the arena still sticky from the blood of her conquests.

Her brother Mark dies in the Games the next year. The seventeen-year-old who had dismembered her brother looks up at the cameras with a bloody smile and blond hair streaked red, almost pink.

"She killed my sister," the boy with blond-almost-pink hair says. "Now I've killed her brother. We're even, you Career whore."

Lily Woo wins that year, and Rick Evans dies at her hand. Chelsea hisses at the black-haired woman who is all red silks and deadly daggers.

_She had no right. _Rick Evans should have become Victor, then Chelsea would have taken her time carving him up all pretty, bleeding out and staining his blond hair true bloodred.

Mark was _hers. _Hers to kill for. Hers to save.

Rick Evans should have died at Chelsea 's hand, for the sin of killing her brother. She hates and resents Lily Woo for stealing that right.


	4. Lanna

Lanna hates her baby sister more than anyone in the world.

Perfect, beautiful Hanna, already shining like a star in her classes, the fastest the strongest the most deadly Career in her class. _Already half a Victor_, her teachers murmur, then cut their eyes to Lanna. _It's a shame about the sister. Shame shame shame about the sister._

Lanna is never going to be Harvested, never going to get to play. Never going to go to the Capitol, and show them what she can do. _Hanna _will. Hanna will go in and blaze bright and burn the arenas down, and the Capitol will love her and fear her and bow at her feet.

It _isn't fair. _Lanna didn't ask to be blonde and brown-eyed and pretty, with a voice that makes you smile and sing along, light and lithe and not good at killing the way they want her to be. She can't shoot a bow with perfect precision, can't even lift a sword, let alone fight with it. Hanna is lean in all the right places, sharp like a blade, built for death. Hanna has edges where Lanna has curves, fifteen different ways to kill with the hair that Lanna can only brush and straighten and condition. Hanna's smile could rip you open; Lanna's only makes you smile right back.

People look at Hanna and see death, trust her to bring death, and that is exactly the sort of thinking that _gets you into the games._

The only thing people trust Lanna at is to trust her to be pretty, sell her beauty to some Capitol man looking to have some fun with a District girl (_she'll never be worth anything, she'll just shame the district if we send her in_)

That's not right. Lanna wants fear, wants fame, wants the glitter of the Capitol on her skin_._ Lanna wants _destruction._

So when _Hanna Linnet_! is called, like everyone knew it would be, her baby sister already running up the stage, bright-eyed and murderous and ready to shine, Lanna screams, _I volunteer!_

The Capitol plays it up as a selfless act of devotion to her sister. Lanna smiles at Hanna, and through her eyes blurring with joy (_not love never sadness_), that smile has the barest hint of teeth.

Hanna seethes.

And of course everyone knows the story. Lanna Linnet goes in and sings the three-headed muttations to sleep, convinces the handsome blond boy that she's in love with him, that the Capitol cannot tear them apart, that they will be prince and princess together. Will Regison swallows every word, blue eyes huge with stories of knights and princesses and happily ever after _(didn't his fucking district beat fairytales out of him?)_. He becomes her knight, becomes her prince in shining armor, and when she mounts the unicorn-muttation with the shining sharp golden horn, blonde hair brilliant and brown eyes sparkling, the Capitol falls in love with the One girl who has never looked more like a princess.

(When the muttations turn on them she falls to her knees weeping and screaming and wailing, slashing the throat of her unicorn-muttation. But there is the slyest smirk on her face as Will Regison's blood drenches her snow-white steed.)

She comes home to be crowned Victor, and it is sweet.

But the sweeter victory is when her sister throws a screaming rage fit when the Capitol tells her, _no, no, you can never Volunteer. Don't waste your beautiful sister's act of selflessness now._

Lanna has _won._


End file.
